The major problem in India in the pediatric surgery department is the lack of infrastructure and also the lack of trained manpower, trained nurses, trained paramedics because the pediatric surgery needs advance support, support from our pediatric medicine neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) colleagues and all the other sub specialties of the department. Shahid Akhter | ETHealthWorld | November 09, 2018, 17:00 IST

What are the trends that you see in pediatric surgery today?In the last few years most of the conditions in children were diagnosed in the antenatal period, that is during pregnancy and at the time of birth. They can have problem in the heart, kidney, abdomen and various other organs. So, shift from post natal diagnosis to the antenatal diagnosis happening even in the countries like India where diagnostic facilities are slowly and progressively evolving. Other than that, older children with availability of poor advanced surgical care are being treated more rapidly and they are able to go to school, they are able to do their work more rapidly compared to the earlier period. so that risk of the surgery has decreased because of the advancements in medical care.

What are the challenges that you find in pediatric surgery ?The major problem in India in the pediatric surgery department is the lack of infrastructure and also the lack of trained manpower, trained nurses, trained paramedics because the pediatric surgery needs advance support, support from our pediatric medicine neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) colleagues and all the other sub specialties of the department. Insurance is quite a common thing in the western countries. In India most of the insurance companies do not provide insurance for congenital anomalies and that is how the major chunk of people are out of the insurance cover. The government is trying to add that and recently the court has also ordered the government or IRDA to add genetic disease in the insurance sector. So things are slowly and progressively changing but still the lack of insurance for congenital anomalies is a major challenge in our set up. Apart from that government is providing services by means of government hospitals but advanced care on those hospitals except few are not available and that is the third major challenge for the poor patients who are there in our part of the world.

What makes Rainbow Children's Hospital so different from others ?The basic concept behind the Rainbow Children's Hospital is that all the sub and super specialities of the pediatrics related diseases of the children should be under single roof. The consultant and faculty should be top class and they should be available to interact with each other for optimal care of the children because now a days the management of problems of children is not a single person's challenge. it has to be team effort. For example, in pediatric surgery the team will include pediatric anesthesia then the pediatric nurses trained in the operation theater for doing surgeries in small children, post operation they will need NICU care. All of these come under a single roof in a single facility then obviously the results will improve and this has been quite successful all over the world, if you see the western countries almost always the concept of pediatric hospitals are there. The pediatric stand alone hospitals are also successfully being run in the southern part of India but in Delhi NCR it was lacking and this Rainbow Children's hospital is still one and only pediatric super specialty hospital in which all the services related to pediatrics are there under a single roof.

The hospital has got investment from CDC which is British government agency and we have purchased almost all the machines which are available in the western countries. Machine in the NICU, PICU ventilators are world class which I have seen in the western countries. Apart from that, if you see the operation theater the laparoscopic instruments, the energy sources, all of them are world class and provided to us for optimum and good results and optimum care of the children. We in the last few months have done more than 200 cases successfully with zero complication, about many of these were minimally invasive surgery for example Laparoscopic Pyeloplasty for UPJ obstruction we have done through minimal invasive root, we have done cystoscopy for the many congenital anomalies. We have done neonatal surgeries also successfully in our set up. So the pediatric surgery department is doing quite good and since inception, has provided quality services to the people of Delhi and even out of Delhi, in the northern part of India.

Your future plans for Rainbow Children's HospitalThe future plan of the hospital is that all sub and super specialties in pediatrics should be under this role and that's how we plan to start pediatric liver and renal transplant in near future. We also have bone marrow transplant facilities which we are starting in the next few months. We have got cochlear implant facility. So there are things which are in pipeline for the next few years. We will also start teaching services in our hospital, teaching for pediatric surgery, pediatric anesthesia, pediatric neurology etc. which are there in the southern part of India. Teaching will be a major part of our hospital in the near future.